Family-based studies to the rescue of genome-wide association studies in renal function

Contrary to the apparent impossibility of replicating linkage results across studies on renal outcomes, and denying the general difficulty of identifying meaningful association signals under previously identified linkage peaks, a new study on an isolated Mongolian population could replicate two previously reported linkage peaks and corroborate them by significant associations at multiple single-nucleotide polymorphisms. Although the two genetic loci are not novel, the study sheds light on key aspects of the genetic analysis of kidney function in the general population.